rss

Trading Time Frames

Trading across multiple-time frames must be one of the hardest things to do as a trader. Many I know have chosen to avoid this completely while others wait patiently until all time frames correlate with their general read, which sometimes can take weeks if not months depending on the various time frames in question.

Some struggle with the volatility of the tape, while others struggle with a psychological bias. At present I am struggling with the different pictures on different time frames. Currently I have trades on both sides of this argument taking index shorts against the weekly pattern while playing daily longs as they setup. The net gain has been a whole bunch of nothing which is making me ask the question if the different trades are worth it or if it would have been better to simply wait for one picture to resolve itself and correlate with the other. In hindsight this certainly sounds like it would have been the smarter play.

—Patience is never fun but until we have some solid resolution I still believe it to be the best play.

There’s that ‘P’ word again…

30 Trading Rules

1. Buying a weak stock is like betting on a slow horse. It is retarded.
2.
Stocks are only cheap if they are going higher after you buy them.
3.
Never trust a person more than the market. People lie, the market does not.
4.
Controlling losers is a must; let your winners run out of control.
5.
Simplicity in trading demonstrates wisdom. Complexity is the sign of inexperience.
6.
Have loyalty to your family, your dog, your team. Have no loyalty to your stocks.
7.
Emotional traders want to give the disciplined their money.
8.
Trends have counter trends to shake the weak hands out of the market.
9.
The market is usually efficient and can not be beat. Exploit inefficiencies.
10.
To beat the market, you must have an edge.
11.
Being wrong is a necessary part of trading profitably. Admit when you are wrong.
12.
If you do what everyone is doing you will be average, so goes the definition.
13.
Information is only valuable if no one knows about it.
14.
Lower your risk till you sleep like a baby.
15.
There is always a reason why stocks go up or down, we usually only learn the reason when it is too late.
16.
Trades that make a lot of intellectual sense are likely to be losers.
17.
You do not have to be right more than you are wrong to make money in the market.
18.
Don’t worry about the trades that you miss, there will always be another.
19.
Fear is more powerful than greed and so down trends are sharper than up trends.
20.
Analyze the people, not the stock.
21.
Trading is a dictators game; you can not trade by committee.
22.
The best traders are the ones who do not care about the money.
23.
Do not think you are smarter than the market, you are not.
24.
For most traders, profits are short term loans from the market.
25.
The stock market can not be predicted, we can only play the probabilities.
26.
The farther price is from a linear trend, the more likely it is to correct.
27
. Learn from your losses, you paid for them.
28.
The market is cruel, it gives the test first and the lesson afterward.
29.
Trading is simple but it is not easy.
30.
The easiest time to make money is when there is a trend.

10 Typical Trading Errors

1)Refusing to define a loss

2)Not Liquidating a losing trade ,even after you had acknowledged the trades’s potential is greatly diminished.

3)Getting locked into a specific opinion or belief about market direction.From a  psychological perspective this is equivalent to trying to control the market with your expectation of what it will do :”I’m right ,the market is wrong.”

4)Focussing on price and the monetary value of a trade,instead of the potential for the market to move based on its behaviour and structure.

5)Revenge-trading as if you were trying get back at the market for what it took away from you.

6) No reversing your position even when you clearly sense a change in market direction.

7)Not following the ruled of the trading system.

8)Planning for a move or feeling one building ,but then finding yourself immobilized to hit the bid or offer ,and there after denying yourself the opportunity to profit.

9)Not acting on your instincts or intuition.

10)Establishing a consistent pattern of trading success over a period of time ,and then giving your winnings back to the market in one or two trades and starting the cycle over again.

Strategies to prevent overtrading

1. Before each trade, clear your mind.

As I was flipping through channels, I came upon an interview with a surfer. He was saying that he knew a big surf would come and he would go underwater. The interviewer asked, how does he handle it? He said, it is simple. If I panic, I only have 3-5 seconds of air to breathe. If I stay calm, I have 45-60 seconds of air.

What does surfing have to do with trading? Well, especially when the markets are choppy, if you overtrade, you could lose all of your capital. However, if you take a moment and think about your trades, you can have much better results.

2. Have a trading plan and stick to it.

Plans are roadmaps. You want to know where you are headed. Think about it. If you are having a surgery, you want your surgeon to know why he is performing the surgery, where he should start, and what is the expected outcome.

In order to stick to your plan, think about your plans/rules as giving your word. Usually, we associate giving our word as a contract and we do not break it with others.

However, this rule does not apply to ourselves. So treat yourself as well as you would treat your best friend, and keep your word to yourself.

3. Look at each trade as an individual transaction.

Ask yourself:

If this was the first trade of the day, would I get into it?

What would be the initial size of this trade?

Do not look at an individual trade to make up for all of your losses.

4. Create a routine that works for you.

We are creatures of habit. As Aristotle says, “We are what we repeatedly do. Therefore, excellence is not an act, but a habit.”

5. Come from abundance.

There are a lot more opportunities. You will get what you expect. You might have heard of the following:

Imagine going to the ocean and taking water from the ocean. You can use a thimble or you can use a huge tub. You can do it once or as often as you want. It does not matter to the ocean, it is up to you and what you think you deserve.

6. Be patient – look for the right opportunities.

As the saying goes, there is a lot of fish in the sea.

7. Keep a daily journal.

To start with, keep track of:

Where you got into the trade

Where you exited the trade

Why you got into the trade

Why you got out of the trade

After a while, you’ll notice your own patterns.

8. Remember, this is a process. It takes time and experience. Rome was not built in one day.

9. Reward yourself.

I know this might sound counterintuitive. A lot of us wait to celebrate and reward ourselves till we do things perfectly. We think that if we start celebrating the intermediate steps, we’ll become complacent.

The truth is, to create a new habit, we need encouragement. Imagine a baby who is just starting to walk. S/he takes his/hers first step and then falls down. What do parents do? Do they yell and punish the child, or do they encourage and celebrate his/her action? If you said the latter, you are right.

Usually, encouragement works much better than punishment. The idea of celebration is to encourage ourselves.

Trading is simple, but not easy. The greatest difficulty is to accept the simple rules and follow them with discipline.

To summarize, the 9 steps to prevent overtrading are: (more…)

10 Rules for Traders

1. You Must Have a Game Plan
2. You Should Follow the Game Plan
3. Always Trade With a Stop Loss
4. Diversify Your Trades
5. Trade the Big Moves While Filtering Out the Small
6. Trade With the Overall Trend
7. Do Not Listen to the News; Only the Market
8. Don’t Listen to Your Broker.
9. Have Money Management Rules
10. Most Important: Have the Discipline to Follow the Rules

Trade with Discipline

1. never EVER add to a losing position. EVER! If it’s not working, why add good money to bad? At this point, you are in damage control mode. It’s another thing if you are trying to pyramid into a position. For example: You go into a trade with 1/3 size, add another 1/3 and add the final 1/3 in an attempt to build a full position in a stock you feel strongly about. I do not mind that. But adding money to a full position which is not working is a BIG NO in my book! You never want any ONE trade to ruin your entire week or month folks. DISCIPLINE!

2. NEVER ever compromise your stop loss. I know a nice ran away bull market makes everyone think that’s okay to remove the stop loss or lower the stop loss to much lower levels because eventually the stock will bottom and rebound. BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL guys! This is absolutely NOT what we are trying to do as traders. This is basically turning your trades into investments just because you cannot handle the pain of a small loss. It is much easier to dig yourself back form a 2-3% loss than a 10-15% loss. Hindsight is always 20-20 and most of you will say “gosh, i shoulda stuck to the original stop”. Trust me, life will be much less stressful taking occasional small stop losses along the way then being stuck in “hold and hope” mode.

25 rules of Trading Discipline

  1. The market pays you to be disciplined.
  2. Be disciplined every day, in every trade, and the market will reward you. But don’t claim to be disciplined if you are not 100 percent of the time.
  3. Always lower your trade size when you’re trading poorly.
  4. Never turn a winner into a loser.
  5. Your biggest loser can�t exceed your biggest winner.
  6. Develop a methodology and stick with it. don�t change methodologies from day to day.
  7. Be yourself. Don�t try to be someone else.
  8. You always want to be able to come back and play the next day. Once you reach the daily downside limit, you must turn your PC off and call it a day. You can always come back tomorrow.
  9. Earn the right to trade bigger. Remember: if you are trading poorly with two lots you must lower your trade size down to a one lot.
  10. Get out of your losers. (more…)

Psychological

.PsychologicalThe goal of any trader is to turn profits on a regular basis, yet so few people ever really make consistent money as traders. What accounts for the small percentage of traders who are consistently successful is psychological—the consistent winners think differently from everyone else.

The defining characteristic that separates the consistent winners from everyone else is this: The winners have attained a mind-set—aunique set of attitudes—that allows them to remain disciplined, focused,and, above all, confident in spite of the adverse conditions.

Those traders who have confidence in their own trades, who trust themselves to do what needs to be done without hesitation, are the ones who become successful.They
no longer fear the erratic behavior of the market. They learn to focus on the information that helps them spot opportunities to make a profit, rather than focusing on the information that reinforces their fears.

You don’t need to know what’s going to happen next to make money; anything can happen, and every moment is unique, meaning every edge and outcome is truly a unique experience.

The trader that it’s his attitude and “state of mind” that determine his results.

Discipline-Risk Management-Passion

DISCIPLINE: The trader must have the ability to control themselves and follow a plan. Discipline is a required skill in trading without it there is no edge, you are either a gambler or simply trading off fear and greed. You will not be successful, instead you will be gamed by those in control of their emotions.
RISK MANAGEMENT: Risk management must be a top skill for a trader to even survive in the markets. You must structure your risk per trade to be no more than risking 1% or 2% of your trading capital. You have to be able to survive 10 losses in a row. These strings of losses come around more often than a new trader would suspect. If you lose just 5% of your trading capital in each of ten trades you will be down almost 50% and need a 100% return just to get back to even. At this point you are ruined.
PASSION: A trader must love to trade, without a passion for the markets and trading the new trader will not survive the learning process because anyone with common sense would believe that it was not worth the struggle. Passion will be needed to bring a trader through the learning curve and later the losing streak.

10 Thoughts for Traders

  1. Managing your risk, you will not be around to win if you do not control your risk per trade. How many losses in a row can you survive? Surviving the market is magic at times.
  2. Trading a consistent methodology is magical because you will be consistent enough to make money when a market environment rolls around that it works in, single trades by themselves mean nothing outside the context of a method.
  3. Trading a methodology you believe in will enable you to trade it through draw downs instead of giving up.
  4. Understanding your edge will enable you to have the mental toughness to trade knowing eventually you will get the pay off.
  5. Trading price action versus your own opinion will help you magically be on the side of the majority most the time.
  6. Trading in the direction of the trend will enable you to be right more times than wrong most of the time.
  7. Cutting losses short and letting winners run will make you profitable. Now that is the magic of asymmetry.
  8. Only trading in markets and trading vehicles you understand will keep you safe from many big mistakes.
  9. Doing nothing when you do not know what to do is a plan that will save you much money.
  10. Spending thousands of hours studying charts, reading books from successful traders, and doing the right homework will make you successful eventually so all your friends can tell yo how lucky you are. Then you can tell them that is isn’t magic, trading is a lot of hard work.